Day 11 - How To Build A Squidoo Lens And Creating RSS Feeds

Today we get to learn how to build a Squidoo Lens. We’ll learn how to sign up for an account, build a lens, and the importance of keyword optimization in the content. Guru Bob is also going to show us improvements on the “Find Content” feature in Market Samurai.

Squidoo is one of the best platforms for hosting content and getting indexed in Google. I like Ed’s analogy of a spiderweb we’re using the different content platforms to build a spiderweb to try and catch our traffic.

Day 11 is approximately ~24 minutes

How To Create A Squidoo Lens

(video length ~17 minutes)

Week 2 is very much about creating quality links to promote your blog. We’re going to use powerful web 2.0 content platforms starting with Squidoo.

Signing up for a Squidoo account is just like every other form on the internet. Just fill the form and sign up!

• After you sign up you come to a page that asks you about building a lens. If you already have an account you can get to the same place by going to the upper left of your dashboard and clicking the “Make A Lens” link.
• Step 1: In the My Lens is about field use your keyword phrase
• Step 2: What’s Your Goal for your page? Caro says to choose whatever we want here. She usually goes with the default option here. I want to get the word out about Dog Adoptions (easiest option)
• Step 3:Try to use your main keywords in the URL…if it’s not available try using dashes.  When you’ve completed this section click next.
• Step 4: “And 3 More Good Ones” - use 3 from your secondary keywords or categories on your blog.

Funny it said there were only 3 steps to creating a Squidoo Lens.

• When setting up your lens - I’m assuming this is a first time thing you can setup your bio by putting a short blurb along with a photo.
• Once your bio is setup you need to set up a minimum of 3 modules to get up and running.
• Click the Edit button next to “Introduction, Content, and Discovery Tool”  Use your keyword for the title and add copy you’ve created to the description area. - use material that’s you created - original copy.
• You can check to see if your content is original by going to http://www.copyscape.com to check and see if your material is indeed original.  You may want to do this if your using some content from other articles.
• Caro also uploads a relevant photo.
• Caro recommends less links.  Take a few keywords and link to your main ranking vehicle (your wordpress blog).  You can also link with some of the category keywords as well.
• You can add your RSS feed to the lens as well

The actual purpose of the Squidoo Lens is to build quality links to your blog. Although Caro does add a link back to our affiliate product on here Lens and uses the Vintage Electric Guitar Price Guide image for her link.

Remember you only need 3 modules.  You can remove the modules or add different modules you’d like to include.

***Caro’s main recommendation:  Make sure you don’t include to many links in your lens.

The final step is to make sure you use Socialmarker to let the social bookmark sites know your new lens is available.

Caro submits to 10 Social Bookmark sites.  Make sure you don’t bombard the Social Bookmark sites.  Do your best to make sure you offer quality content.

When you submit to Social sites you always want to make sure you’re submitting quality content.

Find More Content Using Market Samurai

(video length ~5 minutes)

There are now some new features in Market Samurai.  First new content sources and second your can create your own RSS feed for your specific keyword.

New content platforms are now available on Market Samurai.

• Wikipedia
• Youtube
• News/Miscellaneous
• Yahoo News
• Yahoo Answers

After you do your content search Market Samurai generates an RSS feed that you can use in areas such as the RSS module in your Squidoo Lens.

Steps To Take Today

• Create Your Squidoo Lens
• Submit to SocialMarker
• Check out the RSS Feed and new content areas on Market Samurai